Stars Reach

Do not purchase this game. It's unbelievable that even in the day and age that people put unfinished products on steam that should never be there that this is here. It has interesting systems, but it's so undercooked that I wouldn't even call this pre-alpha. This is a tech demo that you offer for free. This dev is clearly out of dev funds and seeking funding hoping that this works. I wish them the best, but players shouldn't put their hard earned dollars into this as it's YEARS away from a playable product.

TL;DR - Game has good bones, but isn't ready. I recommend it in 3 years. THE FULL: Backed this game on Kickstarter the moment I heard about it. The guys from SWG and UO? YES PLEASE HOLY CRAP YES. THE GOOD: Space sim part is quite good. Full 3D motion and lack of gravity is fun and pretty realistic. The mining is FANTASTIC. As an example.... The first time I tried digging out a lode of gold underneath a mountain, I wasnt getting anywhere...then I noticed it's because the surface is made of freakin' sand. Sand that was flowing down into my pit and filling it in. I just about cheered! Amazing realism! I went and bought a tool for melting and lithified the sand that was flowing down. Boom, gold for days. Well, minutes. As you'll see later. The mining is amazingly realistic. Ive spent about 90% of my time mining because it's so well done, and watching your ore or elements flow into the hopper is lovely. You even have to be careful about the tailings, because if you dump it out in the wrong place, it'll fill your newly-made mine! The surface travel is pretty easy and fun once you get the hang of it. Grappler and grav belt basically turn you into spiderman, and you already have the climb and non-vertical surface, so that's neat. THE BAD: Pretty much everything else. The combat is VERY clunky. all enemies are basically pokemon with special attacks of fire, poison, lightning, etc. You shoot at guys, who shoot at you, until someone is dead from all the shooting. You can use other tools to kill them with, I even took the skills to do so, but theyre worthless in terms of range, damage, and hitbox. The game is pretty small right now. Only 6 or 7 systems. That seems like a lot, but each system is 1km^2 of space, with a station and some asteroids, and 4 planets. Each planet is also 1km^2, so really there's not much space at all when you get right down to it. There is one system that's just space, without a space-station. Everyone mines the asteroids in that one. Because every time anyone mines a certain ore, there is a chance that stuff becomes INTERDICTED. Meaning if you touch it again, you get a warning. Then, the NPCs send an unkillable drone to take you out. This means of course that the most useful stuff you need (like freakin' IRON) is impossible to get. You know how long it took me to mine more than about 3 iron? 8 days. I didn't get any until my 8th day playing, because thats when I discovered the space-only system, which doesnt have NPC robots, and you can keep mining beyond the warning without dying. So that gold I dug down to earlier came with a pop-up that tells you to stop, or else. Kept going, and then I died out of nowhere. No gold for me. Well, to hell with it. Ill just mine for fun then. You find loot crates in the dirt sometimes. Then my inventory got full. All 500 slots. Because each item you mine, forage, cut-down, harvest, or whatever has different stats, depending on where and when you get it. So let's say you need some bananas. You find some, then harvest them. Congrats, you have bananas. But youve cleaned out this grove. Better move on. So the next grove....takes up a second slot. You clear out the planet. So you move to another planet in the system. That also has different stats, so more slots. Each planet, each area, and even times of day will mean another slot in your bag. So moving to harvest ANY resource means you have to stop and open your bag, and painstakingly click and merge each type of resource, which lowers the stats of each item as it's done. The first time I did it, I went from 499/500 slots to 107/500 slots. Expect to spend most of your time on stations dealing with that. You cant just bank it either, because banks are per-station (no banks on planets), and each one only holds 100 items, and if you forget what station you put something in, you are ♥♥♥♥-out-of-luck and have to visit each one to find it. Just build a house and store it there, then. Ok. Except the building is the most janky, derped-up way of doing so I have ever seen, ever in any game. It's not minecraft or 7D2D with blocks, it's not pre-made blocks you can clip together like Ark or Valheim. You have to get a special tool, then the HUD locks perspective and you have to click and drag, then select XYZ axi, THEN move each one individually in each direction. And there's still no clipping to corner or surface. It is literal punishment. What's even worse is that putting crafting tables and such in your house is also nearly impossible. You want to put a basic fabricator in your house? Well, you can't. Until you unlock the recipe. Which means all the metal and wood and crap you mined will be wasted. Because to grind XP for making house parts (not even the crafting items, JUST ♥♥♥♥ like floors and walls), you have to make them. Cost me 1000-ish Iron (about 2 hours of mining that lawless space asteroids place), and 800-ish Manganese just to make 200-ish walls and foundations each, to get the XP to learn the skill to make a basic fabricator for your house...which just makes walls and foundations and such. The XP/Leveling system is COMPLEX. You have to harvest the resources to craft the tools to craft the tools to craft the crafting stations to craft still further tools to craft OTHER crafting stations....just to unlock the skills needed to craft the useful stuff. The combat and knees-bent-running-about stuff is easy to skill up. The rest requires so much grinding it's not even funny. Which would be fine, if it wasnt so damned complicated to actually DO anything useful besides dig holes and shoot space pokemon. And Ive been playing Eve Online since 2006. It's less intuitive than even that (and THAT was brutal). This is worse. Which leads me to my last.... THE UGLY: The loot. Do you want loot from the bad guys you kill? Well too bad. You can't. Bear with me. I'm pretty smart. I graduated high school at 14. I have SEVEN (useless) degrees; Anthropology, Archaeology, Psychology, Social Studies, Abnormal Psychology, General Sciences, and Oceanography. I would have had 12 degrees, but I never took any math higher than statistics, because boooooring, and statistics is just lying with numbers, which offended me heartily (thus, no degrees in geology, astronomy, etc., because those 2 extra math classes). I read at least 1 full novel every day, even work days. I don't subvocalize, AND I have hyperphantasia. Reading for me is like watching a movie in my head. If you have even heard of a Sci Fi or Fantasy book series, I guarantee you I have read it. My brain has so much random imaginatory knowledge that I can pretty much guess what's going to happen in any aspect of life. In MMOs, I always figured out the fight mechanics the 1st time seeing them. There's a reason we were server-first everything while I was there. I have also run a D&D game. Weekly. From 2003 to 2020. 8+ hours at least once a week. The amount of wacky nonsense I have seen, heard or dealt with both in-game and just getting 6 people together EVERY WEEK for a decade and half...if you have a problem, I know or can find a wacky solution. All of the above just to back up my point: I'm pretty good with figuring stuff out. I have an unparalleled imagination, a solid knowledgebase, great problem-solving skills, and so on. Rare+ loot crates each have a randomly-generated puzzle to open. Failing the puzzle twice destroys the box, but at least you can quit before you hit zero moves left, and that refreshes the attempts. I can open the rares. Even if I dont get the exact plan, I can guess it out. I figured out ONE legendary. No epics at all. I even tried to get AI to figure a few out with over 400 sequential screenshots each, submitted one at a time looking for clues and guidelines. Took 6 solid hours. The epics, it just couldn't figure out. The Legendary, it crashed the AI. No loot for you. Come back in 3 years.